Quotes About Publishing

I write a book over a period of months or years, and when I'm done with it, usually another year goes by before I see it in print. It's hard to be patient and wait.

With the movies, people are not going to wait around. The deadline is a deadline. In publishing it's more a polite suggestion.

But I guess the first time I made career money was signing a publishing deal when I was still at uni. That was when I waited to tell my mum that I was dropping out, which was half-way through my first year.

I wrote one book, signed with a good agent, and sat back and waited for the phone to ring. I was sure that the great news would come at any moment. Four books later, I finally got that call.

Suddenly I could control every aspect of publishing, and it was incredibly empowering! I didn't have to sit by the phone any longer waiting for things to happen because I was the one making them happen. That's why I decided to start Amber House Books.

I think when you've had success, publishers and reviewers and readers are willing to let you try something new if you've already proven yourself. They're excited about what you're doing, you have people interested in it, and actually waiting for it. It's empowering.

Apple doesn't need to maximize book sales. It simply needs to keep publishers happy enough to maintain an impressive-sounding inventory of titles while waiting for entirely new forms of publishing to develop.

I've been here 21 years, and I literally did walk up and down Music Row trying to break into the business. I felt very free to go into any publishing company.

It took me eight books to finally be at a point in my career where I could come out with a book and say, 'This is meant to be a funny book,' and we didn't have to make any bones about it.

The creation is a very internal process, and publishing the book is a very external process. It is nice to see the book out in the world and people having the same reaction as when I created it. The point of all art is the emotional transference, and when that happens, the book has succeeded.

I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'

A friend of mine suddenly announced she had written a novel and got a publishing deal; I thought, 'Hang on... if she can do it, I can bloody well do it, too.' That novel went to a bidding war, and went on to be a huge best-seller.

I feel lucky I didn't become that newspaper cartoonist I wanted to be because in the U.S. so many newspapers have suffered circulation declines, and some have folded. What's fun about being an author is I reach a much bigger audience, and there is something special about launching a book you've penned.

After I've sent my revised draft to my agent and editor, they suggest more improvement sand again, this revision phase can take anywhere from a few hours to a few months.

After writing each novel, I would spend days poring over suggestions from my editor.

New York is the Hollywood of the publishing industry, complete with stars, starlets, suicidal publishers/producers, intrigues, and a lot of money.

It was immaterial to me that Elvis didn't write his own songs. Those were very different days, and he selected whatever suited him best from material supplied by publishing houses and teams of writers - all of whom were extremely conscious of his style of delivery.

Most fledgling and mid-list writers are lucky to be offered a 4-figure sum and are not only expected to deliver copy that needs minimal editing but also take an active part in marketing and publicizing their work.

In the summer of '80, Silhouette bought my first book.

Typically, a book is published and gets one season in the sun. Eventually, you write another book, and maybe your old books get a bump, but my books seem to keep being discovered and recommended to new people of all ages.

I can hire out for editing, proofreading, formatting, and cover design, and those are fixed, sunk costs. Once those are paid, I can earn 70% on a self-pubbed ebook.

There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel.

Whirl man's mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!

He was generally disappointed by the new novels of the early postwar years: "There was a terrible sameness about books being published and I almost stopped reading as well as writing.